How to Get Out of Debt, Stay Out of Debt, and Live Prosperously by Jerrold Mundis

Author:Jerrold Mundis [Mundis, Jerrold]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-53479-8
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-05-07T16:00:00+00:00

What’s It Worth?

In most families, one partner puts in more time working on the household’s behalf than the other, sometimes much more time. Traditionally, this has been the female partner. That’s not always the case now, but it’s still more true than not and probably will be for a while. For our purposes, though, who does this is irrelevant. What is relevant is how that fact is acknowledged.

Hours spent working on behalf of the household—or rather the cash value of those hours—need to be recognized as a contribution to the Household Spending Plan, and one that’s every bit as real as if the partner who worked them had written a check to the household. The best way to handle this is for you and your partner to arrive at a figure that is agreeable to both of you through casual discussion. If you think it would be helpful to approach the question more formally, here are four simple guidelines you might use.

First: Begin by recognizing that your time—as the time of a human being—is neither more valuable nor less valuable than your partner’s time. Your earning power per hour or day may be different, but the absolute value of that hour or day, as a unit of time, is not. Your time, as the time of a human being, is worth exactly the same as your partner’s. One hour equals one hour, regardless of who works it or how much he or she can command for it on the market.

Second: Estimate the number of work-hours your household requires in order to keep functioning well. Restrict these to true work-hours, such as shopping, lawn-mowing, or caring for young children. Don’t include time spent doing the things we all do for ourselves or for each other as a matter of course, such as picking up after ourselves or playing with our children. A simplified reckoning might look something like:

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.